The invention relates to a printer unit having a cutter mechanism for cutting continuous paper such as rolled paper, and a printing apparatus incorporating such a printer unit.
In the related art, one type of printing apparatus is known that includes a cutter mechanism for automatically cutting the paper to separate a printed portion from the rolled paper after printing. In order to reduce margins of the paper, the printing apparatus of this type preferably has a print head and a cutter mechanism, which are positioned as closely to each other as possible. To this end, in many printing apparatuses, the cutter mechanism is placed in an overlapping manner downstream of the print head.
Portable devices and multi-processing systems, which have features of printing apparatus(es), have recently achieved widespread use. In a device of this type, restrictions are imposed on an integration space of a printer unit including a print head and a cutter mechanism. Particularly in the case of a portable device, the overall thickness of the device is determined by the thickness of the printer unit. Hence, strong demand exists for reducing the size, or slimming of the printer unit.
However, in the case of the related-art printer unit, a cutter driving motor and a cutter driving mechanism are built into the cutter mechanism (cutter unit), and the cutter mechanism and the print head (head unit) are arranged in an overlapping manner, thus posing limitations on slimming of the printer unit.